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Monday, October 20, 2014

T-Money Cards

In Seoul (and many other areas around South Korea), the easiest way to get around is by use of the T-Money card! The card stores money that can be used on many modes of transportation, including taxi, bus, subway and train. There are different types of T-Money cards, like the T-Money Pop Card, which is sold in GS 25 convenient stores, and the Seoul City Pass Plus Card, sold in various convenient stores and has benefits at tourist attractions around the city. While studying in Korea, I bought two T-Money cards and just recently my friend sent me another one! So here I'll share the different types of T-Money cards that I have.

Seoul City Pass Plus Pop Card
Since this is a Pop Card, it is specially for GS 25. It cost 3,000₩ (~$3USD) for the card itself, then you can put in however much money like a debit card. The backside of the clear packaging (as will all three of my cards) has info about the Pop Card and GS. As a tourist friendly card, it comes with a brochure of touristy coupons in its packet. I really love this card because the design is so pretty!

Unofficial Kpop Card
The underground Kpop shops in Myungdong Station (which I talk more about here) sell a variety of T-Money cards with photos of Kpop idols plastered on top. To my frustration, each card cost 10,000₩, but this photo of Myungsoo was too enticing for me to pass up a chance to have him on my own card. On closer inspection, I noticed that the photo is printed on a thick cardstock, then plastered on top of a regular T-Money card. I'm tempted to peel away the photo just to see the actual image of the T-Money card, but I won't.

Official Kpop Card
There are also times when Pop Card releases their own official Kpop cards. This past September, they released one of Infinite, Mblaq and U-Kiss. My friend finally was able to find and send me the Infinite card, after searching at many GSs! 
Included is a mini pamphlet with information about a joint app that gives the user access to Infinite's exclusive photos and other content by using NFC to scan the card with your phone. There's a sneak peek photo of Woohyun in the bottom left! Sadly this app isn't available in the US, so I can't see the exclusive content :(

In short, T-Money cards are super convenient and come in many cute designs; going around Seoul, T-Money is the way to go!

1 comment:

  1. Hi there, good writing about T-money card in Korea. Here is more tip for you. In ICN, you can purchase some good and reasonable transportation packages. There are 'express train and T-money card','express train and international taxi' and 'express train and EG sim card'. With express train, you can go to Seoul station(Central of Seoul) directly, and you can choose between three other options what you need. With T-money card, you can take only All-stop train of airport railroad so I strongly recommend you to buy those transportation packages more than buying seperate tickets. If you are interested in these packages, please visit to 'travel center' in ICN(located in B1), and you can get more information. Thank you.

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